The Crossings mention of Ozymandias meaning

sgr011

The poem Ozymandias is quoted by David at the end of the Crossing:

"Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

The poem it's self is a message to all kings that time erodes all your achievements.

Now David can either be speaking on behalf of the humans where the ability to destroy them is the great work and they will surely despair. Alternatively he could be speaking as the Engineers.

Let me explain; the Engineers wanted to destroy the Humans, 2000 years ago so any motivation was purely philosophical as far as David knows. So he presents them to their own creation: either the black goo, or the humans. 

This though makes more sense, as time went on Humans became more powerful who eventually kill the Engineers laying waste to them as time laid waste to Ozymandias.

Or the Black Goo, also a great work, eventually turns on them.

David could also be wrong about all of this as the Engineers look angry in some screenshots it could mean they didn't want Humanity destroyed but a fringe group did and they went rogue.

Tl Dr: Humans lapped Engineers in technology and it is how the Engineers end.

sherris

i wonder what the reasons were to want to destroy humanity.

i thought that maybe the engineers did try and wipe out humanity.  and they dropped the black death but due to the outbreak on lv223, only a few ships took off and managed to drop their payload on earth.

this may be told in history as a plague. the black death for instance.

as the humans had the gift of fire, they were to eventually wipe out the plague by burning all affected.

alien dont like fire.

now when the prometheus expedition awoke the engineer, maybe the engineers were told or found out that the attack 2000 years ago wasnt a success.  they assumed the attack went ahead as planned and assumed the engineers 223, were then back in long term cryo until the next mission.   which may only happen every 5,000 maybe 10,000 years. explaining why the engineers didnt know about the failed earth mission.

some marketing said "mankinds greatest achievement may be their last" - is that because the engineers now know earth is still populated with humans. they have had that info for 10 years and are planning something which david finds out about.

maybe they destroy civilisations who refused to worship them or who may in the future become a threat to their ways by gaining knowledge on nuclear, ftl etc..

or maybe not.

Mike M.

Seems to me the scene of the people, engineers?, looking up is a red herring. I think he's quoting it because he's looking down on a dead civilization. The engineers were a super advanced race. What better time to quote that then when looking down on what is left of them as xenomorphs? protomorphs?

I think the people looking up coincides with the timeline 2000 years ago. Hence why no one ever came back despite clearly being no more than what? a 10 year journey in their ships.

They are wearing gray robes. the ground is full of black dots... like a @$@ ton. look at how many and how quickly they are filling the area and how they are simple mindedly clumping as close to the ship as possible. Those aren't humans/engineers... its a zerg of ....morphs....  the quote is on the base of a broken statue of a long lost empire.

David looks down on a dead city full of ....morphs.

"Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

maybe the normal looking burned people were already there?? at a loss for explaining that.

Blackstar

@Mike M. There are no Morphs. They are simply swarming to the center to celebrate the arrival of their "Gods"

This has been confirmed by numerous leaks

CarynDelacroix

To me, it almost seems like parts of the poem are a reference to a location:  "I met a traveler [...] two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.  Near them on the sand,  half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command[...]"  Do you think it's possible the beginning of the poem represents a "treasure map" of sorts?

I'm thinking maybe David literally "met a traveler" at some distant refueling station or port planet while Dr. Shaw was asleep.  This mysterious "traveler" from the beginning of the poem hypothetically tells David some of the stuff he's able to learn about the Engineer civilization, which leads David to perceive them a certain way.  What if David got lost and had to stop to ask for directions?  In this scenario, he would wait until his 'partner' Dr. Shaw is asleep to admit that he doesn't know where he's going:  they check the star map before she goes to sleep, but he somehow gets lost and can't find Paradise.

The "traveler" in the poem might have updated David's map with the exact location of this planet, allowing David to reach the point he's at now:  the path to Paradise begins in Hel, but David is possibly skipping the earlier parts of the journey.